beeconcise

What is it about watching a whale that speaks to me? I have no idea, except that I’ve alwasy wanted to go on a whale watching excursion and now I’m determined to make this a reality. It’s simply time to get started on my bucket list, if you can call it that. I want to take the Victoria Clipper out of Seattle for only a day trip over to Whidbey and see the whales while we’re at it. How difficult is this? We certainly have the time on our hands.

Then I want to go to Dayton, Washington, to view the winery there and have lunch at the 5-star French restaurant. Or maybe dinner. And maybe it’s not even a 5-star. Maybe it’s only a 4-star … but it isn’t fast food and it is supposed to be excellent and I love the idea of something wonderful being in the midst of a small, rural community … so that’s it for me. Then I want to spend the night at the Winehard hotel, and I don’t even remember if that’s the actual name. We’ve planned this trip for several different times and it never happens, so this year I’m going to make it happen for me, a birthday for me to me. I like that.

And then I need a Georgia fix. Need to hug that little 4-year old again before he turns 5, or maybe just after he’s turned 5. He’s starting kindergarten this year, in early August, and I’m wondering if the teachers will know they really do absolutely have the world’s most adorable grandson in the whole wide world there in the classroom. Don’t you think I should be there to tell them that? He’ll ride the school bus, and I think I really should be there to drive that school bus. Shouldn’t i? It feels almost like I am sending my own kids off to college, when I grieved their being away from home so much for so long. I know this is silly, and my little grandson has excellent parents to keep him on the straight and narrow … but, well … I’d still love to be there. Am sure my daughter will take videos of him getting on and off the school bus so I can be a part of that. I guess I should just concentrate on going to watch the whales and trust that this little guy at 4 yrs. of age really is going to be just fine. In a way it’s all a matter of faith.

Until I started this blog I never knew how often I think about, watch and enjoy the birds in our neighborhood. As I drove out this morning to have coffee with two friends, I saw a march of some 50 quail on the hill at the north end of our street. They marched single file and disappeared underneath a large, snow-laden evergreen tree.

Sometimes we have to stop the car to wait for a bunch of them to cross the street, always in single file. They never look at the cars, but somehow sense that we’ll never drive into their midst, but choose instead to enjoy their quiet and quick marches around here.

A few weeks ago I spotted two deer in one of the green spaces in our neighborhood. I stopped the car, mesmerized. What is it about deer and quail that so enthralls people? Or at least me? When I figure it out I’ll let you know, but right now, off the top of my head, I’d have to say it has to do with life forms other than mine not being afraid of me or people like me. That’s something, if you stop and think about it.

A few years ago Dennis and I lived in a different neighborhood and we were engulfed by deer that winter coming down to feed at our shrubs, because we had an unbearably cold winter. We woke each morning to find deer prints in the snow in our back yard, and on the side of the house. All over the neighborhood shrubs were eaten clean up to a certain level, as high as the deer could reach.

One evening I came home form work rather late, and found four large deer sauntering down the main road like teenagers in a pack. They stopped when my car got close. Not like deer caught in headlights. Nope. These deer were too tame for that. They stopped, looked at each other, then looked backover their shoulders at me, then looked back at each other, then turned their heads and continued sauntering down the middle of the street. I followed them for two blocks until I could turn off onto my own street. Every time I remember this scene I think about how much they reminded me of a bunch of teenaged friends, unafraid and out together for the evening. This always makes me smile.

This winter we have a Fat Albert blue spruce (I think) in the corner of our back yard. I belive we’ve had it there for about two years, and this will be the third summer. All winter we’ve had about 30 small birds living in this tree. I can’t imagine a large nest and maybe not even a small nest, but if there were any nests there to house this many birds, it would be like a little condo village. This afternoon a bunch of them were taking refuge from a late winter snowfall under the steps on our patio.

Hard for me to believe we’ve been here in this house now nearly 4 1/2 years. How time flies when you’re having fun, they say. We moved in November 2006 and I was still working full time, but the move shortened my commute time from 45 to 20 minutes. That was very nice. Lots has happened in this short span of four years. Some good. Some very surprising, and some not very good at all, but we’re still here, surviving I suppose you’d say. I can hardly wait for spring, and then our lovely, wonderful, peaceful summer.

With all of the uprisings around the country I feel blessed to be here in Spokane, although if I had half a chance I’d mosey on down to Georgia, and we all know this. Eager to get busy on my novel, though. It isn’t a bad way to ease into retirement.

Really. They just seem to be everywhere. On the way home from the gym the other day I counted 6 bird nests, and today, on the way home from the grocery store, I saw 4 more. Little houses, waiting to be occupied. Sort of like empty apartments, I think, except I don’t look as fondly at empty apartments as I do bird nests. I keep wondering if we have a nest in our evergreen tree in the back yard, because it’s been full of birds all winter, but don’t want to disturb them to go creeping around the tree and peeking into the branches. Have just enjoyed their company so far this winter. I always feel special when I find a bird’s nest, and don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because I know that a lot of people never see them, probably because they never bother to look up at the trees. Little do they know what they’re missing.

The big day, and I am feeling loved and thought about. So is my daughter and her family and I’m sure son and family are, also. Flowers, cards, candy, the works. Maybe a little sappy, but think about it ~ who doesn’t want to feel loved and cared about?

I took my 92 yr. old mom a box of chocolate-pecan candy and a card on Friday, and today took her a Papa Murphy pizza (her favorite lunch), plus a prayer shawl I just finished knitting her and also a knitted (and felted) remote TV holder. Had to rush yesterday to get that done, but did finally take a walk around the neighborhood so I didn’t feel like too much of a couch potato, knitting and watching Hallmark TV movies all day long.

I can’t even remember many Valentines during my younger yeas, or even the early married years. The ones I remember are a few in early grade schools, when cookies and red punch were on the agenda for the Valentine’s Party, and everyone got Valentines from everybody else. I remember I always liked writing out the names of class mates on the Valentines I was giving away, and enjoyed this even more than I enjoyed receiving Valentines from others in the class. Daughter Allison sent a picture of grandson Asher sitting on the floor, writing names on his valentines for his 4-year old preschool classmates. It was so sweet it made my heart hurt.

I do remember one Valentine in particular that I ‘hand delivered’ literally – to a boy I had a big crush on when I was in Jr. High. He went to a different school. My mother suggested we drive by his house, I run up and leave the card in his door, ring the bell and run back to the car really quickly. Well, wouldn’t you know he was ‘there’ by the door, opened it and there I stood red faced, trying to turn and sprint quickly to the car, but there were a lot of steps up to the porch and … and … I didn’t fall, but didn’t make my escape as quickly as I’d wanted to, either. He knew it was from me and I was mortified. Talk about a red face. Looking back, I still can’t believe my mother put me up to that! I can still see her, sitting in the driver’s seat in our green Plymouth, waiting for me to make my escape with ease, except that didn’t happen. I will say,though, when I got back into the car and slammed the door, my mother’s foot was already on the gas pedal. Some things you just never forget.

Later, when I was grown, and received a first Valentine from a little granddaughter, that would be Jamie, I was so elated that I took it to a frame shop and had it professionally framed. Was I a proud Grandma? You bet. No way around it. It’s still hanging here on my office wall, even today. If I ever learn how to put pictures here on this web site, I can show you lots of things, can’t I?

Every year when Valentine’s rolls around, I think how much more meaningful it would be if I would send personal letters to people I love, instead of manufactured, commercial cards, but then I always go for the glitz. Buy the cards, send them off, and by the time I get around to this I don’t even have time to write those meaningful messages that have been floating around in my head the past few weeks. Maybe I’ll do better next year. After all, I am a writer! You’d think it would be an easy task.

But right now I have red and white tulips on the kitchen counter from hubby, and three Valentine cards. Store bought or not, I am feeling very loved. I guess that’s all that counts. So, I hope the valentine’s I’ve sent help make other people feel loved, as well.

As a child growing up in Pensacola, Florida, I never saw snowflakes floating over the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico, or the sandy white beaches advertised today in travel magazines. It never crossed my mind before moving to the Pacific NW that people could actually long for spring.
But now I understand. On sunny February days (and sometimes even on cloudy February days) I venture out into the back yard to check on the asparagus, hoping to find tender shoots poking through the soil, and to see if the transplanted iris made it through the winter. Just this week I found a hearty ivy ready to spring up a fence, and rasbperry stalks full of buds. With just a little more sunshine the cherry tree will burst into bloom
The first summer after moving to Spokane, I called home in Florida with a planned trip in April to see the azaleas in bloom. My mother told me, “Honey, the azaleas bloom in February. By April they’ll be all gone.” And they were. As I remember that spring, here in Spokane in February we still had brown grass, no flowers and surviving plants half-buried under late snowfalls.
Fate did bring me here to Spokane, Washington in 1978 with my own small family. But now there are many reasons that keep me here, and the magnificent summers count right up theer with the best of them. Lakes and rivers have taken the place of the Gulf of Mexico and sandy white beaches have been replaced by summer wheat fields that glow like gold in the sun.
I’d write more here this morning but it’s time for me to refill my coffee cup and venture out to the back yard, once again, to see if the bleeding hearts made it through the winter, check on the pink rose bush and the clematis, and the lilac bush we transplanted last summer. I must remind myself to also take a peek at the grape vines on the trellis outside my office window. If I didn’t know better this cold February day I’d think it was time to get out my gardening journal where I like to record when the peony first blooms, or when I find a robin’s nest n the plum tree.
Living here simply gives me so much to do that I have no time to miss the Gulf Coast, or even the azaleas that are surely in bloom now in Pensacola, Florida. I am feeling blessed to be here, at this time, in this place, and am grateful that fate brought me here in 1978, even though it wasn’t always the case.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and it seems people are focusing as much on the snacks and foods as on the game itself. Once upon a time, in what I refer to as my other life I actually thought I could love my role as companion, wife, cook and nurturer enough that I would be loved in return. One Super Bowl in particular – probably the last one where I found myself in that particular role, I planned a Super Bowl meal for half-time, centered around what I thought was inspirational … don’t laugh now … seriously … a meatloaf in the shape of a football, even to the ‘laces’ made of red pimento strips. (OK. Even I am smiling a little bit at the stupidity of this!). I could have easily put together a football shaped cake, for God’s sakes … but no, I went for the meat loaf.

Now I ask you. Have you seen any TV chefs on morning shows this week promoting football shaped meat loaves? I think not. Certainly not Martha Stewart. Butterfly shrimp, fried to a golden brown and on a small stick for easy eating, maybe, but no football shaped meat loaves have graced my TV screen. Looking back I can see the folly in dreaming up something so silly, and actually expecting any food to save a relationship, like expecting a Hail Mary pass at the last instant to save the game. It rarely does. I just thought ~ If I put a whole lot of effort into this, it will make a difference. It will show how much I care, about us, our togetherness, about the Super Bowl, even!

Well, it didn’t make a difference. I don’t think anything could have made a difference, and have to admit now, so many years later, that sometimes a game is simply not to be won. But I’ll tell you one thing. I learn from my mistakes. I can truthfully say that there will never be another meat loaf on the menu in this house ever again on a Super Bowl Sunday, no matter what shape it arrives in. Not in this house. Not in this family.

My only regret is that I didn’t take a picture of this one-time master piece. After all, it was a LOT of effort. I am talking about the meat loaf, of course.

… so we can rejoice in their achievements, as well as their giving joy to us. Just received an e-mailed photo of son, Phil, (VP of Vista Engineering) with WA Gov. Christine Gregoire, Tom Lemly (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP) and Lynn Townsend-white (Western Polymer Corp) with an award for Vista Engineering Technologies, Richland, WA, as the only Tri-Cities company in Wasington recognized by the Assoc. of Washington business Better Workplace Award. This is for practicing what they preach when it comes to taking care of their employees. How cool is this? Don’t I wish I’d been fortunate enough to work for a boss who felt this way about companies I worked for? I did once, only once, in all my working career, have a boss like this. But not for very long. It’s hard to find someone this caring. Oh, I know, I shouldn’t brag, but you know what? I’m so glad to know that both my kids have good hearts. Good minds, too, thank goodness, but even more important in my book, good hearts. Ahhhh … such a proud mom I am!

Now I know, beyond a doubt, why we have children. They are meant to add joy to our lives when we most need it. After my Jan. 29th post (Late this afternoon, I think it was titled), I wrote that I felt like my dream of becoming a writer was now buried in concrete, and my daughter posted a sweet comment that revived my sagging spirits – this was in response to my note that I wondered if a tiny speck of my creative energy might be left floating around which did not get buried in concrete. I felt like a business park had been build over my dreams. (I do get so dramatic!!).
And then Allison posted this sweet message:

… maybe if you take a mental walk through the business park you’ll find a small atrium with a tree growing right through middle that some caring soul decided to let grow so they built the whole park around it.

Yes. Maybe. An atrium. I like this image. Sounds like a title of a book to me.